The obstetrician and gynaecologist Peter Huntingford, who has died aged 71, was a charismatic teacher, a first-class researcher, an excellent surgeon, a brilliant communicator and an innovator ahead of his time. On the issue of abortion, he was an outspoken supporter of a woman's right to choose, and his contribution to the changed climate in maternity care is incalculable.
Huntingford was born at home in Walworth, south London. He presented as a breech and was delivered by the district midwife, weighing 9lbs. Dr Ronnie Laing might well have linked his unusual birth (only 3% of babies at term present bottom first) with his unconventional career path.
He was evacuated at the beginning of the second world war, and this experience was emotionally traumatic for him. Secondary school at Dame Alice Owen's, Islington, was followed by medical training at the London hospital medical college, where he qualified with honours in surgery, and obstetrics and gynaecology in 1953. Tuberculosis, which he developed as a medical student, was treated successfully in a Swiss sanatorium, where he learnt German and met the woman who became his first wife.
Huntingford lectured at Charing Cross hospital from 1958-61, then became senior lecturer and honorary consultant at St Thomas's hospital. He worked in the new field of perinatal medicine and helped to develop foetal monitoring. In 1965, he was appointed to St Mary's hospital, Paddington - at the age of 36, the youngest professor in his speciality - and was assistant editor of what is now the British Journal Of Obstetrics And Gynaecology.
He was a founder member of several influential bodies, such as the Blair Bell Research Society in 1962 (where he was active as an officer until 1971), the Anglo-German Medical Society in 1961, and the European Society of Perinatal Medicine in 1968. From 1965-71, he was secretary to the Medical Research Council working party on the prevention of rhesus iso-immunisation during pregnancy, an initiative which has almost eliminated perinatal deaths from this cause.
He published more than 70 scientific papers during this period, as well as contributing to medical textbooks and making tape-slide programmes for teaching medical students.
This brilliant and productive academic career led to Huntingford being asked by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (Spuc) to allow his name to be used on its letterhead. Spuc was formed after the passage of the 1967 Abortion Act to fight against its provisions, and Peter, as one who had done research designed to improve foetal survival and wellbeing, was seen as a natural ally.
Huntingford, however, was an obstetrician and gynaecologist who listened to women, and he came to believe that they should make their own decisions about their bodies. He was fortunate in having as his senior lecturer at St Mary's, David Paintin, who had worked in Aberdeen with Dugald Baird, and was a quiet advocate of a woman's right to choose. Peter became an outspoken and high-profile supporter of the pro-choice movement. This capacity to change his mind endeared him to his friends, but also made him enemies.
In 1970, he left his chair to work for the World Health Organisation as adviser in maternal and child health in south-east Asia. By then, his first marriage had ended in divorce and he had married his second wife, Diane.
Returning to Britain in 1974, he was appointed, as professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, to head the joint academic department of the London hospital and St Bartholemew's hospital medical colleges. He took this post on the understanding that he was not going to do research, but apply the knowledge that he had gained to provide a good service for women.
Huntingford set up the Tower Hamlets day-care abortion service in 1977, and worked with GPs to encourage them to take part in maternity care. He started a domino scheme in which the GPs and midwives looked after women delivered in hospital and transferred them home after six hours. He supported home births - which was not then the policy of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
He advised the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the Family Planning Association, and chaired the Pregnancy Advisory Service, then one of the two non-national health service abortion providers. He gave evidence to the Lane Commission on the working of the Abortion Act, and was unstinting in his support for women to have a choice about whether or not they had a baby, and how they gave birth.
Huntingford moved from the main teaching hospital at Whitechapel to the greener and less pressured Mile End hospital. There, he was able to provide the kind of service that women wanted - and he wanted for them. His attitude to student teaching was far ahead of the time; he sat with the students, and they wrote the aims and objectives of their course (this was before I was appointed as senior lecturer, in 1977, and helped to provide a structured course).
Peter felt that the attitude of the doctor - and thus of the medical student - was of crucial importance in look ing after women; he was teaching this 20 years before the General Medical Council published Good Medical Practice and Tomorrow's Doctors, with their emphasis on good communication and partnership with patients.
In 1981, he resigned his chair and took up an NHS consultant post in Maidstone, in a unit without registrars, where he worked until he retired, aged 60. His dedication to his patients was exemplified by his walking the seven miles to work during the 1987 storm, when the roads were impassable.
Peter realised the potential of mass media to get his message across, and was an accomplished performer. In 1984-85, he presented the influential television programme, Birth Right: The Parent's Choice. In retirement, he did medico-legal work, applying his brilliant mind as an expert for the plaintiff, helping women who had suffered adverse surgical and obstetric outcomes.
Huntingford will be re membered with gratitude and affection by thousands of women whose complaints he listened to with attention, and by those he cared for in pregnancy. Those whom he taught, both as medical and midwifery students, and those who listened to him lecture, will remember his extensive knowledge, and logical, yet caring, approach. His contribution to the changed climate in maternity care - with its emphasis on women's choice, which led to the 1993 Cumberlege report - is incalculable.
Despite his academic achievements, Peter never became a member of the establishment. Sadly, his last decade was spent living alone in relative obscurity, his marriage and life destroyed by alcoholism.
He is survived by Diane, and his children, Paul and Zoe.
• Peter John Huntingford, obstetrician and gynaecologist, born June 1 1929; died October 13 2000
